“I have a family,” I said.
“Are they relying on you to put food on the table or are you just looking for some extra spending money?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to admit that I might need to help my parents buy food. “Extra money, I guess.”
“We’ll let you know,” he said, shoving my application into the back of the folder.
I started to walk out, then turned back around. “I’ve seen other kids my age working here. Do they support their families?”
“Actually, yes,” he said, nodding. “Some do.”
“Oh,” I muttered, turning and walking out. Maybe I should’ve considered that country club job, but it was too late. The auditions had started an hour ago.
Brady was on the front lawn when I got home, throwing his gravel into the road. Kaya was sitting on the porch with a coloring book.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked.
“Upstairs talking to Daddy,” said Kaya.
I looked around for Carla, but she was nowhere to be seen. “Who’s watching Brady, then?”
She sat up very straight. “I am!”
“What if something happens? You’re six years old.”
“If Brady leaves the yard, I’m s’posed to holler as loud as I can. Like this . . .” She took a huge breath.
“No!” I stopped her. “I get it.” Had Mom forgotten that Brady would have a total freak-out if Kaya yelled like that?
I went over to my brother and took his arm. “Brady, come with me. We’re going inside.”
He yanked his arm away and went back to his rocks. “You go,” he said.
“You need to come with me,” I said. “Now.”
He scooped up a pile of rocks and kept throwing them, one by one.
I batted the gravel out of his hand and seized his wrist. “Enough with the rocks, Brady! You can’t put them all back. You’ll never put them back!”
He dropped them then, and his hands went to his ears. Pounding. He started that silent-screaming thing again.
Kaya rushed over to us. She pushed me in the stomach. Hard. “You ruin everything,” she said. “Leave him alone.”
I stumbled away from them, almost falling over the bike I’d left in the yard yesterday. Mom and Dad hadn’t even asked me about it. They were too busy worrying about money to pay attention to me or even Brady.
I ran up the back stairs to get them, but when I reached the top, the door was ajar and I could heard them arguing.
“What about unemployment? Can’t you get that?” my mother said.
“I’m not unemployed, Susan.”
“You should’ve been there, Mark. Those people were poor, and not because their multimillion-dollar businesses were failing. I felt like a fraud.”
Dad slammed something on the counter. “I’m doing the best I can. You want me to give it all up? Go begging for a job at Sheffley’s?” That was Dad’s competition, and the biggest printing company in the state. They weren’t known for treating their employees particularly well.
“No,” said Mom. “I just hope it turns around soon. I don’t know how long I can keep this up.”
“It’s not that bad, Susan. We have a roof over our heads, we have food, we have clothing. The kids are in their same schools. Brady is thriving here. He’s—”
“He’s playing in the gravel by the side of the road! He’s palling around with the neighborhood thug!”
Ah, so she didn’t think so highly of Lennie after all.
“That boy is no thug. His only crime is living in a poor neighborhood,” he said. “Don’t be such a snob, Susan.”
Mom gasped. “A snob? Now I’m a snob because I want something better for my mentally disabled child? For all my children?”
“Our children,” Dad corrected, his voice louder. “They’re our children and we made this decision together. It’s not going to kill them to learn that everything in life doesn’t come to them on a goddamned silver platter.”
My hand flew to my mouth as if I was the one who’d cursed. My dad never swore. He never raised his voice at Mom, either.
Their voices got lower then, and I heard Dad saying, “I’m sorry. I’m doing the best I can.” It sounded like he might cry.
I pushed the kitchen door open then. Dad was sitting on one of the kitchen stools, and Mom had her arms wrapped around him. They were sort of rocking back and forth. They looked up when I stepped inside and realized I must’ve heard the entire argument. Or maybe they just didn’t have the energy to put on their everything’s-just-fine faces anymore.
“I’ll get a job,” I said. “I just put an application in at Save-a-Cent.”
Dad’s whole body slumped even farther than it already was. “You don’t have to do that, Ivy.”
“If they don’t have anything, I can try some other places. And there’s . . .” I took a deep breath, for courage. “There’s this job at the Morgans’ country club. . . .”
“It’s too far,” said Mom. “I’m already driving your father to work and myself to work and Brady to therapy and . . .”
“Okay then, I’ll find something around here that I can walk to,” I said, relieved that the country club option was out. “I could give piano lessons, maybe . . .”
Dad sighed and Mom stroked his back, and we all just stood there not saying anything for a few minutes. We could hear Brady’s gravel landing in the road, one tiny fistful at a time.
Kaya could take care of him just fine, apparently, and I ruined everything. I climbed the two flights to my room and sat by the attic window, looking down on my neighbors. Looking down at my neighbors, that is. I couldn’t exactly look down on them anymore, could I?
TWENTY-NINE
Reesa called around four o’clock. “How’d it go?” she asked, all breathless.
“Oh . . .” I hesitated, deciding whether to lie and tell her I’d bombed the audition or confess that I hadn’t gone.
“You bailed, didn’t you?” Her voice had that steady, I-am-pissed-off-but-trying-not-to-show-it tone.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was too far away, anyway.” I paused, waiting for her rant, but it didn’t come. She only sighed. “Are we still on for tonight?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Get over here already. I have something to show you.”
I yanked my hair into a ponytail and splashed water on my face, threw some clothes and my toothbrush in an overnight bag, and went down to the kitchen. Mom looked me up and down. “That’s what you’re wearing?” I had the same clothes on I’d worn to the food pantry.
“Since when do you care what I wear to Reesa’s?”
She had put on a nicer outfit just to drive me over there, maybe expecting Reesa’s mom would invite her in. But Mrs. Morgan didn’t even come out to say hello.
“I’ll pick you up in the morning. Ten o’clock,” Mom snipped.
I couldn’t believe Reesa’s mom would’ve brushed her off on purpose, but she was right there in the kitchen when I went inside. She smiled like she was posing for someone who was taking too long to snap the photo.
Reesa dragged me upstairs. “Wait till you see what I found.”
I was expecting an amazing dress, maybe a couple of great flapper costumes from her mother’s closet. But she opened her laptop, clicked on a browser window, and stood back.
“There,” she said. “The Wickertons of New York.”
I leaned in. It was a fuzzy photo of some people standing at the bottom of a big staircase.
“It’s from a few years ago, but look,” she pointed to a boy. “Same hair, only shorter. It’s got to be him.”
I looked at the caption, which identified the boy as Robbie Wickerton. “Wrong name,” I said.
“Maybe it’s a nickname. Because that kid looks exactly like James. You can’t tell me that’s not him.”
I looked closer at the boy named Robbie. There was definitely a resemblance, but I refused to agree with her.
“Please. It doesn’t look anything like him,” I said.
“It looks exactly like him,” Reesa insisted. But she put the photo away and didn’t bring up James or his family’s obscene wealth again after that. I hadn’t told her about the trip to the food pantry or my failed attempts at getting a job, but even Reesa was perceptive enough to notice that something was bothering me.
“What you need,” she said, “is some Reesa therapy.”
She pulled out her nail polishes and gave me a manicure while we listened to music, taking turns choosing songs. Determined to cheer me up, she pulled out the big guns: her 1980s playlist. For every “Raspberry Beret” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” she blasted, I countered with an “Over the Rainbow” or “I Dreamed a Dream.” It was Madonna versus Evita, Wham! versus Wagner, Joan Jett versus Phantom of the Opera.
“You are not giving Reesa therapy a chance,” she said, as her latest selection, “Jessie’s Girl,” started to play. “The first step is admitting you have a problem.”
I nodded. “I definitely have a problem. But I don’t think Rick Springfield is going to fix it.”
She pulled me up from the bed to dance with her. I tried, really I did, but “Jessie” started with a J, like James, and it only reminded me that he’d stood me up at open mic night. It appeared he didn’t want me to be his girl, after all.
I flopped onto Reesa’s bed and flipped through her huge stack of celebrity magazines. She played with my hair, twisting it into ringlets, then teasing it so it stood straight out like a giant afro. It was hard not to feel at least a tiny bit better.
After dinner (take-out sushi from our favorite sushi place), Reesa grabbed our coats and led me out back to the deck. I could see our old house from there, the window of my bedroom. It was dark. Empty.
“Here.” She pulled a key from her pocket and handed it to me. “I found this.”
I turned it over in my palm. “A key. To what?”
“Your house, silly.”
“Um, thanks. I guess my mom can give it to the bank people, or the Realtor or whatever.” I slipped it in my pocket.
“No, dummy. It’s for you. To get inside. Hello?” She wiggled her fingers like she was playing a piano. “It’s still there, right?”
It was. My piano hadn’t been sold yet.
“I know you miss it,” said Reesa. “I thought you might want to go back and play it one more time.”
I stared at the key in my hand. “But . . .” I missed everything about home—my old life—so badly. How did she know it was the piano I missed the most? “What if they changed the locks?”
Reesa shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out.”
She took my hand and we walked the short distance from her house to mine, slinking through the shadows.
“I feel like a burglar,” I said.
“It’s not like we’re going to steal anything,” said Reesa. “We’re only visiting, and it’s your house, anyway.”
I pulled out the key as we approached the back door. We hadn’t been gone that long, but everything seemed so different. The yard was sprawling, the patio immense. The flower beds so . . . so trimmed and mulched.
The key slid into the slot and turned easily. When I pushed the door open, the alarm sounded, which I expected. It was just a little tiny beep, a reminder to disarm it. I punched in the code, the last four digits of our phone number, and pressed ENTER.
It went silent. I was home.
We stepped inside and pulled the door closed. It was dark in the house, and cold. I knew the heat was turned off, or set very low. But there must be electricity since the alarm was working. Reesa flipped one of the six switches by the kitchen door. The recessed lighting above us flickered on.
I breathed in the smell of home. But it wasn’t quite what I remembered. Whatever combination of odors made home smell like home—the cooking, the furniture, the soap Mom used and Dad’s cologne, Kaya’s rescued frogs and Brady’s bouquets of dandelions—it was already dissipating.
I crossed the kitchen to the back stairs that led up to my room. Reesa followed me, turning on lights as we went. Everything was so big and so painfully empty. None of our furniture remained. I knew it was being sold off, but didn’t realize they’d take it all so quickly. The hardwood floors were bare. Our footsteps echoed through the house. I entered my room, stared at the spot where my four-poster bed used to stand. No more desk, no dresser, no vanity, no rocking chair. It was all gone. Only the window seat remained. I walked to it and sat in my usual spot, where I used to watch Reesa crossing our yard on the way to my house. I wondered if Reesa remembered how we used to talk on our cell phones until she made it all the way up the stairs and sat down across from me.
She plopped herself down there now and put her hand up to her ear and mouth like a phone. “Bye. Hi.”
She remembered.
“Bye. Hi,” I whispered.
Reesa dropped her hand to her lap. “It’s weird in here. Like a ghost town.”
I nodded. Nothing was the same, and now that I was here, I knew we’d never be back. I just hadn’t expected everything to be so . . . gone.
“You want me to stay?” said Reesa.
“I think I’d like to be alone, if that’s okay.”
She nodded and scooted out into the hall. I waited until I heard the kitchen door close before making my way to the piano room, tears pricking at my eyes. Everything was so different. I couldn’t believe I’d lived here less than a month ago. It felt like a lifetime. And seeing the piano there, all by itself in the moonlight in the middle of the room, reminded me of a line in the nursery rhyme song, “The cheese stands alone.” I plunked out the simple melody on the keys, and sang along. “Heigh-ho, the derry-o, the cheese stands alone. . . .”
I nudged the piano seat out and sat down, played one of the lullabies I’d made up for the twins. It sounded hollow.
Just rusty, I told myself. I tried again, grasping for something deep inside that would bring the song to life. Came up empty.
It didn’t feel right here. No furniture, no rugs, no family . . . nothing but cold, bare floors. Only memories remained, and they were lonely here, too. I closed the lid on the piano keys, slid my hand over its smooth wood surface. Every sound I made was magnified, eerie.
I thought I heard a noise downstairs and checked my watch. Only seven thirty, not time to go. I tiptoed to the door, listened. Footsteps crossed the kitchen and started up the steps. I clung to the wall.
“Ivy?” Reesa waltzed into the room. “Where are you?”
My shoulders relaxed. “Rees, you scared the crap out of me.”
She turned to see me huddling by the door. “Your mom just called.” She thrust her cell phone into my hand, a pinched look on her face. “You need to call her back.”
I couldn’t figure out why Reesa seemed angry. “Is everything okay?”
“You have a visitor.”
“A visitor?” I ran through a mental list of people who knew where we lived and might pop by unexpectedly, and came up with . . . nobody. “Who?”
Reesa put both hands on her hips. “Apparently, James Wickerton is at your house, waiting to see you.”
THIRTY
I followed Reesa out of my old house, turning lights off as we went. She didn’t speak to me the whole way, just stomped a few paces ahead of me. It gave me a moment to be: A, scared that this was the end of me and Reesa; and B, mortified that James was in my apartment. When we got to her yard, I called Mom.
“It’s me,” I said.
She had her we’ve-got-company voice on. “There’s a young man here to see you. His name is James. He says you have a date.”
“A date?”
Reesa glared at me.
“Would you like to speak to him?” said Mom.
“No, no. I, um . . .” I glanced at Reesa with pathetic, help-me eyes.
She grabbed the phone and put it to her ear. “Hi, Mrs. Emerson. It’s Reesa. Why don’t you ask James if he wants to pick Ivy up here at my house.”
She shoved the phone back
into my hand and plopped down on one of their deck chairs, arms crossed firmly over her chest. There was some discussion in the background on Mom’s end.
“He says that’s fine,” said Mom. “We’re giving him the address.”
“Thanks, Mom. Sorry about the, uh . . . confusion.”
“Just be home by eleven. Here, at the apartment,” she specified. “Not Reesa’s.”
I pushed the button to end the call and handed the phone back to Reesa. She snatched it and walked away from me into the yard.
“Reesa,” I called after her. “I was going to tell you. . . .”
She spun around. “That you’re dating the guy I’ve been pining over for weeks? You didn’t think it might be appropriate to mention that he already has a girlfriend, and that girlfriend happens to be YOU?”
“I’m sorry.” I put my face in my hands.
“You promised,” said Reesa. “I asked you if you liked him and you looked me right in the eye and you promised me you didn’t. And, shit . . . that day in the hall? When he was making hand signals at you? You were totally lying to me!”
I shook my head, knowing it was true but not wanting it to be. “It just happened. I didn’t think he liked me that much. I was pretty sure he’d bail the second he found out where I live.”
Reesa let out a sharp burst of laughter. “You really think highly of him, don’t you? Must be a real catch. I guess I should thank you for saving me from the guy.”
“I was wrong, okay? I’m sorry.”
She brushed past me to go inside.
“It’s not like I stole him from you.” I followed behind her. “He never showed any . . .” Oohhh . . . I could tell that was the wrong thing to say before I even finished saying it.
She wheeled around. “I get it, Ivy! He didn’t like me. He never liked me! That hurts, but it’s nothing compared to my best friend lying to my face for three weeks. I guess I know now why you insisted he wasn’t my type.”
“I thought you’d be mad,” I said. “I was afraid you’d tell everyone about . . . about my move, and . . .”
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